Earlier this month, with the Nvidia RTX cards release, we really couldn’t resist benching one of them. We had the opportunity to get a RTX 2070 GPU card from ZOTAC. Here is a summary of our test bench results.
Test Conditions:
The tests were performed with:
Configuration: ZOTAC RTX 2070 AMP! Edition and i5-8500. See below for more details.
Ambient temperatures: 21°C to 22°C (70°F-72°F).
Benching software: 3Dmark 4K Fire Strike Ultra.
Results:
Tests were performed with the chassis open or closed, in fanless or silent modes.
In full passive mode with a closed case, both CPU and GPU run around 75°C. In full passive mode with an open case, both CPU and GPU run around 60°C. This difference is explained by the fact that, in fanless mode, a closed case significantly reduces the air intake flow rate and hence the cooling capacity. In silent mode (low speed fan) with a closed case, important temperatures drops can be observed ranging from 18°C to 20°C. The fan enables a closed case to run with temperatures lower than an open case in fanless conditions.
Part 1 video is available here
Part 2 video is available here
Part 3 video is available here
Configuration & Methodology:
Electronics - Set up
The configuration we chose to bench is the following:
MB: Gigabyte Z370N WIFI
Processor: i5-8500
GC: ZOTAC RTX 2070 AMP! Edition
Storage: SSD
PSU: PRIME 600 Titanium Fanless (ATX)
Thermal Grease: Kryonaut
Optional fan: Noctua 200mm NF A20 PWM (800 RPM)
In this configuration, an ATX PSU was installed instead of a SFX PSU. Due to its larger size, the slot for the internal 120 – or 140 – mm fan needs to be removed. As a replacement, we chose to test the optional 200 mm low speed top fan. Designed as an additional part (45 mm height) to be placed on top of The First, it offers the best cooling capacity /silence ratio. This option will propose soon online.
Mechanical variants
Passive cooling performances highly depend on airflow speed (with or without fan) and pressure drops (air intakes). To give you a better understanding of these impacts, we tested several variants of the initial configuration.
Airflow (2): no fan at all, fan at 350 RPM
Air intakes (2): case closed or fully opened
Conclusion:
3Dmark bench tests show a RTX 2070 GPU card can be used in full passive mode with a closed case, although temperatures around 75°C are close to the maximum operating temperatures (80°C). A low speed fan can be used as a security measure to reduce these temperatures by 20°C. However, in real life, typical applications (gaming, workstations) use less energy and computing power than most of test bench softwares. If the fan was installed, it would likely work only a fraction of the time if the motherboard software allows variable speed drive.